IDC: Android jumps to 68.1% global market share, iOS slips to 16.9%

IDC: Android jumps to 68.1% global market share, iOS slips to 16.9%:

According to IDC, Android and iOS now represent 85% of the 152 million smartphones sold in Q2 2012, globally. But while the iPhone kept growing in raw numbers, it couldn’t keep up with Android, and its market share slipped from 18.8% to 16.9%.  The iPhone has always been around 20% market share or lower

HTC’s rumored 5-inch phone gets its name

HTC’s rumored 5-inch phone gets its name:

When you’re fighting for your life, it’s worth giving it your all and a little bit more. That’s apparently what HTC is doing, as it tries to pull out all the stops for the successor to its last flagship phone, the One X. We’ve seen reports that the phone may come with a 5-inch display, which should put it almost at mini-tablet

iPad vs Kindle Fire: Apple tablet wins by a small margin in customer satisfaction survey

iPad vs Kindle Fire: Apple tablet wins by a small margin in customer satisfaction survey:

We have another comparison between tablets coming out from the folks over at comScore, a customer satisfaction survey performed on a 3-month rolling sample of 6,000 U.S. tablet owners (slates measuring 7

Google Maps expands live traffic reports to over 130 new U.S. cities

Google Maps expands live traffic reports to over 130 new U.S. cities:

There was a time when going out the door and planning which route you were going to take was a bit of a guessing game. In those days of old, you were clueless about whether the route you planned on taking would

Who will win the Apple vs Samsung patent war? And what’s next?

Who will win the Apple vs Samsung patent war? And what’s next?:

Where did it all go wrong? Apple and Samsung were once the perfect couple, but it seems theirs was a marriage of convenience. A long, drawn-out, and deeply bitter divorce has seen the gloves come off, as

Overclocked 1.64GHz Nexus 7 dwarfs all competitors in Quadrant benchmark

Overclocked 1.64GHz Nexus 7 dwarfs all competitors in Quadrant benchmark:

The Nexus 7 got a slightly weaker version of the Tegra 3 SoC, clocked at 1.2 GHz, compared to say the one in the Asus Transformer Pad Infinity, which reaches 1.6 GHz, or the one in the HTC One X, which

Android to expand to digicams with Nikon Coolpix S800

Android to expand to digicams with Nikon Coolpix S800:

I’ve always thought that cameras in mobile phones are an interesting evolution. But what if it were the other way around: mobile phone features in cameras? It seems digital cameras are already mutating into mobile phones, too. Or at least with Nikon using Android to power their upcoming Coolpix S800, the platform is starting to go beyond smartphones and tablets.

T-Mobile starts selling Galaxy Note and myTouch phones today

T-Mobile starts selling Galaxy Note and myTouch phones today:

History buffs probably know that August 8 was the date that the famous Great Train Robbery took place back in 1963. Fast forward to the present time, today should go down in history as the day that, umm, the Samsung Galaxy Note, along with two myTouch phones, finally goes on sale on T-Mobile.
As the world’s first phablet, a term that was coined especially for the device, the Galaxy Note still hasn’t lost much of its shine – despite the fact that a sequel is coming out soon. If you’ve been waiting for the GSM version of the Galaxy Note, here’s your chance to snag one from T-Mobile. It will cost you $250 with two-year contracts and after $50 mail-in rebate.
Here are the specs of the Galaxy Note:

• 1.5GHz dual-core Snapdragon S3 processor
• 5.3-inch HD Super AMOLED
• 1GB RAM
• 16GB onboard storage
• microSD card slot
• 8MP rear camera and 2mp front-facing camera
• 2,500mAh battery
• Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich

The other two new offerings from T-Mobile today are the myTouch and myTouch Q. Both phones are similar in specs, except for the physical QWERTY keyboard you’ll find the myTouch Q is sporting. The myTouch phone is being sold for $50 with the standard two-year contract and after a mail-in rebate.
As for the specs of myTouch, here they are once more:

• Single-core 1.4GHz processor
• 4-inch WVGA display
• 5MP rear camera with a dedicated shutter button
• Front-facing camera
• 4G connectivity
• Android 2.3 Gingerbread

Are you interested in getting any of the three devices?

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Namco Bandai may be joining the party, Ouya partnership in active discussion

Namco Bandai may be joining the party, Ouya partnership in active discussion:

In a world full of major gaming players like Sony and Microsoft, it’s hard to think that a little Rubik’s-Cube-shaped $99 Android gaming system could have even the slightest chance. Against the odds, Ouya has

Kaspersky Labs warns new wave of ZitMo Android attacks might be imminent

Kaspersky Labs warns new wave of ZitMo Android attacks might be imminent:

While Android may be a great platform when it comes to its open nature and flexibility, it does have one area where it doesn’t shine so brightly, malware. No mobile platform is truly safe from malware and spyware, but it’s Android and Blackberry devices that have been mostly targeted by several security problems over the

Motorola Photon Q might be released on August 19

Motorola Photon Q might be released on August 19:

Folks, we may have hit a breakthrough on the Motorola Photon Q 4G LTE’s release date. Thanks to Phone Dog’s trusted source, you can now circle August 19 on your non-digital calendar as the launch date of the Photon Q on Sprint. While it’s not official yet and Sprint has yet to confirm, it’s better than the “coming very soon” information that we’ve been hearing about for the past weeks.

Ringbow – a wearable D-Pad solution for Android devices

Ringbow – a wearable D-Pad solution for Android devices:

When it comes to mobile gaming, many feel that touchscreen controls are the one thing holding the experience back. With quad-core ARM processors and higher-end graphics, mobile games are starting to look every bit as capable as many console games, but controlling your character with touch alone just doesn’t seem to get the job done right.

Smartphone Santa, here’s our Samsung Galaxy Note 2 wishlist

Smartphone Santa, here’s our Samsung Galaxy Note 2 wishlist:

I can’t speak for others, but the way I see things, one dark side to daily covering Android news is that you often feel somewhat disappointed when new devices are officially announced, especially if the device in

Googles product

The crowning achievement of Google’s budding social network by far is the ability to communicate with up to nine other people across the world instantly, and for free. Since the arrival of Hangouts,Google+ users have done everything from communicate casually to conduct trans-continental business meetings. There’s no limit to what those nine people can do, or how long they can do it. To make things even better, users can even enter a Hangout from an Android or iOS device, be that a tablet or a phone.

If you are an active Google+ user, you may consider how well your next device performs in a Hangout as a tie breaker when choosing your next gadget. Over the last week, we’ve gathered the top devices across manufacturers, operating systems, and mobile networks and put them all to the test. So, what is the best phone or tablet for a Google+ Hangout?

NEON VS Non-NEON

On paper, most of the hardware required for a Hangout is the same across most of the smartphones capable of joining the Hangout. For the most part, you’d think that the better camera, or the higher quality microphone setup would be the qualities you would look for in terms of what would be best for a Hangout. At the core, what you are really looking for is a chipset that supports hardware acceleration, specifically for video. This architecture type is called NEON. A device with NEON architecture enhances video encoding or decoding, graphics in things like games, and image/speech processing. NEON devices will handle Hangouts much better than non-NEON devices.

If you have an iPhone 4 or iPhone 4S, your device supports the NEON architecture. For Android devices, you’ll need to do some checking to see if it is supported. Using either a file manager on your device, locate a file called /proc/cpuinfo and open it. If you are unable to access this file from your phone, you can download the Android SDK and access the file using the Android Debug Bridge. If you see the word neon on the Features line, then your device supports NEON extensions.

Phones

To measure which device performed the best overall in a Hangout, each device was put through a series of tests. Each device was tested indoors and outdoors in a variety of situations including wind, conversations happening in the background, multiple people addressing the Hangout, and alone in a quiet room. Conversations in the Hangout were also measured for quality consistency. Each of the devices were tested individually, and each of them were tested in as similar a fashion as possible.

This test yielded several interesting results. HTC and Samsung devices of the same generation performed almost identically, with a single exception. The results from the Samsung Galaxy Nexusin a Hangout were wildly varied. In some tests, the results would be great, while in practically identical situations the Galaxy Nexus was nearly unusable. Motorola’s two most recent devices, the Droid 4 and the Droid Razr, also showed a significant variety in results. Despite being the newest in their lineup, the Droid 4 was by far one of the worst performing devices in every situation.

When comparing the iPhone to the Android batch, the iPhone 4S performed well above most of the Android devices, but struggled with noise cancellation in most situations. If there was wind or other people talking, the phone was often unable to handle the distortion and the audio would suffer. The phone that performed best out of the devices tested was the Samsung Galaxy Note. The high resolution of the screen allowed for a very clear and very large image of the other users in the Hangout, while the microphone placements on the device allowed for sound cancellation and external noise suppression.

Nexus HTC

Don’t expect every new Nexus device to come from Motorola, said Google after they completed theacquisition. Fair enough, say sources in Taiwan — who believe the first Nexus tablet will be built byAsus, have a 7-inch screen, sell for about $200, and it could arrive as soon as May.

HTC was also in the running, but apparently Google wanted to take the design lead on the project and HTC was unwilling to hand over that control. HTC, of course, built the first Nexus device ever, so it’s not a surprise to hear they were interested in partnering up with Google again. Acer was also on the shortlist.

Ultimately, however, Asus won out. It may have a lot to do with the Transformer Prime tablet, which was first on the market with a quad core processor. It may also have something to do with the upcoming MeMo, which is supposed to pack Ice Cream Sandwich and a quad-core chip for just $249. That’s right around the price point Google is aiming for — no surprise, since it would allow them to challenge Amazon and the Kindle Fire head-on.

DigiTimes sources are saying the tablet could arrive as soon as May. That would line up nicely with Google I/O 2012, which takes place on April 24 and 25. Google will no doubt be giving away hardware at the event once again, and it might as well be their own tablet.

Of course, Asus and Google haven’t been willing to confirm anything at this point. So this mysterious Google/Asus tablet could end up simply being the Asus MeMo when it arrives. It wouldn’t be a Nexus device, but at least it’d be a dirt-cheap quad-core tablet with ICS.